Make dinner for four for less than $14

Waste not, want not is a good way to summarize chef Peter Smith's thrifty approach to cooking.

BONNIE S. BENWICK

WASHINGTON - Peter Smith is one cool customer. While many of us have been grappling with growing receipt totals at the grocery checkout, he's got it under control.

"It's how you use things," explains the 38-year-old chef, who opened the restaurant PS 7 in downtown Washington a year and a half ago and has worked in kitchens for most of his life. "Everything costs money, and I hate throwing food out. It kills me. I like to take something and extrapolate it as far as I can."

The man who describes his restaurant food costs as "freaky low" agreed to devise a family-friendly weeknight menu for four costing as little as possible. Total time: 1 hour 7 minutes. Total tab: $11.22.

Smith is careful with resources, but he's also a risk taker. He's laid back and funny but loves to compete. That may account for his four consecutive wins in "Iron Chef"-type contests at L'Academie de Cuisine, his alma mater. In the kitchen, he's fast and neat. He doesn't have time to clip coupons, so his meal strategy begins with this mind-set: "When you go to the store now, you have to go with half a plan, because there's so much stuff on sale or in deals that are two for one."

Smith kept to the outer aisles, where the fresh ingredients are, to pick up a sale package of thinly cut bottom round steak, a few nuggets of loose crystallized ginger from a basket in the produce department, a pound of asparagus, a single ear of corn, an onion, two button mushrooms, three baking potatoes, three Fuji apples and a few Roma tomatoes.

Was he relying on a big pantry to round out the ingredient list? Not really. Just canola oil, sugar, vinegar, ground cinnamon, salt, pepper and a few herbs taken from his neighbor's garden, with permission.

With Bob Marley tunes playing, Smith began extrapolating, with a dude-like patter ("awesome," "wicked," "giant") peppering the proceedings. First, he prepped the vegetables, with a plan for all the parts and pieces. A fair amount of oil went into a pan to fry thin slices of onion for a frizzly first-course garnish.

The onion ends were added to a tidy pile of trimmings as he sliced and diced. Those bits would be used to build a vegetable broth, the base of a quick, pan-braised stew. The asparagus spears, deemed tender enough not to need peeling, were thrown into a pot of lightly salted boiling water.

Smith drained the onions and strained the oil; once it cooled, the lightly flavored oil would be used in the vinaigrette, to pan-fry a rosti (potato cake) and to brown the steak. "I do stuff like this at work," he said. Asparagus heels, pieces of corncob, tomato cores, onion ends and mushroom stems were browned in the flavored oil and soon were covered with water to cook into a broth; on his tight budget, there was no way Smith was going to spring for the store-bought kind, and this way, he was making the amount he needed.

Only thin strips of potato peels went into the garbage disposal — and they could have headed for a compost bin, if he owned one. "You might as well peel the potato as thinly as possible," he said. "I learned this from Jeff Buben at Vidalia," where Smith worked for 11 years. "And from a chef a long time ago; he'd pick through my prep station and ask, 'Why are you throwing this out?' The idea is to get the most out of everything you can."

With the blanched asparagus wrapped in a towel and refrigerated, he shredded potatoes to make the rosti, capturing the liquid potato starch in a bowl beneath the grater. It was saved to thicken the stew. "Potato starch is more heat stable than cornstarch," he said. And it was another item he didn't buy.

Apples are not Smith's usual fruit of choice at this time of year, but they looked better than the strawberries and plums. He peeled all of the apples, but then grated one into pulp so its juices (a surprising almost one-third cup) could be reduced with some sugar to make a glaze. Another cost-cutting maneuver; no need to buy a jug of cider.